Alyson Fox: Jill of All Trades

Alyson Fox humbly considers herself an "artist slash designer," but it might be more appropriate to call her a super-talented Jill of all trades. Fox crafts crave-worthy necklaces for her accessories line, A Small Collection, makes short art films and renders texture in a really special way through illustration. In 2008 she decided to dive back into photography– the subject in which she holds a degree—and went about conjuring a portrait project that she could get excited about.

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A Shade of Red is the result of Fox's labor—a collection of portraits of about 150 women, all linked together by sporting the same shade of lipstick: Revlon Certainly Red. "That just had a nice ring to it and kinda drew me in, so that's the color I went with," said Fox. All in all, she knew only about 15 of the subjects—the rest (some of whom had never sat for a portrait) she found through word-of-mouth among the women photographed. Fox says that the youngest subject was 5 and the oldest 89. "They were just excited to be a part of the experience, and that's what really excited me about the project and made me think that this could be a book," Fox said.

The photographs themselves are sometimes stark, sometimes beautiful, and—perhaps most strikingly—the lipstick seems to change shade depending on the wearer. Fox says she only had to use about half of one tube for the project. And while each photo has its own type of beauty, Fox was upfront with her subjects about her intentions. "I was honest with all the women that I was not going for a glamour shot—they were going to be in a fairly raw photo," she said. "They may like their portrait, they may hate it, but all the women were so game and I think that that says so much about how awesome they are."

Fox says she wasn't initially thinking about the implications of building a project around lipstick, but definitely considered its interpretations later on. "I think lipstick is the first thing as a young girl you dive into, whether its your older sister's or your mother's makeup," she said, adding that wearing it can transform how the wearer feels. After a dozen or so portraits, Fox began to consider the connotations of cosmetics and how that affects the gaze of an onlooker. "Red lipstick is usually very fiery, sexy," she said. That being said, the lipstick seemed to take on a personality of its own. "It was such an interesting color and cosmetic choice to use, to see how they personified it in their own way."